The Turnbull government has confirmed an infrastructure spend of $24.5bn in the states that will determine the outcome of the next federal election as the treasurer, Scott Morrison, prepares to hand down his third budget on Tuesday night.

Tuesday’s budget will contain the big infrastructure spend and what Morrison is characterising as modest personal income tax cuts – as well as a return to surplus one year early, in 2019-20 according to speculative media reports, rather than in 2020-21 as forecast in the midyear economic outlook.

The budget will position the major parties for a political fight on tax between now and the next federal election. Labor has positioned itself to match the government’s personal income tax cuts itself while rejecting the Coalition’s “arbitrary” 23.9% tax-to-GDP cap to raise revenue in other areas and deliver higher social spending.

Morrison has sought to massage voter expectations by cautioning the tax cuts will not be “mammoth”, but the minister for urban infrastructure and cities, Paul Fletcher, has boasted the budget will deliver “$24.5bn of infrastructure commitments around Australia”.

On Monday Fletcher confirmed the budget will contain $1.75bn for the North-East link motorway in Melbourne, $475m for a rail connection to the Monash precinct, $132m for the Princes Highway East and $50m for the Geelong rail line.

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Fletcher told 5AA Radio the budget will contain a total of $1.2bn for the North-South Corridor in Adelaide, plus $177m already announced last week for Regency Road to Pym Street; $220m to electrify the Gawler rail; and $160m to duplicate the Joy Baluch Bridge in Port Augusta.

On Monday Malcolm Turnbull announced $400m to duplicate the Port Botany rail line around Sydney airport, promising the project would “bust congestion” and ensure “people can get home sooner and safer [and] gets trucks off the road”.

At a doorstop in Townsville, Labor’s infrastructure spokesman, Anthony Albanese, called on the government to “actually match its rhetoric with some real funding”.

Albanese argued that because projects such as the Melbourne airport rail were to be funded by “an equity injection rather than an actual grant” the government can keep costs off the budget for projects that may not be delivered.

He cited the $5bn earmarked for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility which was then not spent.

The Labor finance spokesman, Jim Chalmers, said Labor will go to the next election as the more fiscally responsible party, warning the opposition may not support income tax cuts for the rich.

“We’re not going to go into pre-empting or predicting what may be in the budget tomorrow night, except to say that we would obviously much prefer to see tax relief for low- and middle-income earners, not for the wealthiest wage earners in our community,” he said.

“Because we’ve engaged in that difficult reform process which the government has ... refused to do, we can actually have budget repair and return to surplus and engage in tax reform, which benefits low- and middle-income earners as well,” Bowen said.